Adventures: walking, travel, PhD research experiences

Obelix

Yesterday Nancy and I sat in the shade beside a barn and ate our cheese and tomato rolls while we looked out over the rolling hills. The landscape reminded me of that in Asterix comics, and I remembered that Gaul was Spain. On our first day of walking after we’d been through the Forest of Witches, a beautiful green, shaded beech forest, we’d stopped in the first bar we came to for a cafe con leche. Pascual pointed out the barman. He was a big, dour looking man, smoking a cigarette over the coffee machine. He looks like a typical Basque, proclaimed Pascual. They lift rocks. In the Asterix comics Obelix does not know where he came from (and the genetic makeup of the Basques is unique, so is a mystery), he is huge, and he likes to lift rocks! Maybe Obelix was a Basque.